


The Fairy And The Fox

by Nelioe



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Not Related, Animal Transformation, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Spiders, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 06:46:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9423083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nelioe/pseuds/Nelioe
Summary: Fill for the prompt 71. (Well, no, it’s not every day you’re transformed into an animal.) in the WinterFRE 2017





	

 

 

His hands were busy with carefully cupping one of the huge droplets when Kili heard it. A small whimper, scared and alone. His head whirled around on instinct, his concentration on the drop waning just for a second... _Splat!_   He winced as the cool liquid exploded in his hands, running over his fingers, drenching his clothes and leaving watery freckles on his face.

Grimacing he reached for a small towel in his backpack, he brought with him for such occasions. This was the first day in weeks he could start gathering again and he had already messed up… Tauriel was surely going to make fun of him. While he dried himself, the noise was forgotten, until it erupted again over the meadow, low and miserable. Kili should’ve stayed where he was. He had a task and curiosity was never a good thing among their kind.

Unfortunately, Kili had never been much like the others and so merely made sure the droplets he’d already gathered were tucked safely in the nets of silk dangling from his belt and set off to investigate the source of the sad sounds.

He didn’t have to look long. Hidden in the high grass, at the entrance to the forest lining the meadow, huddled a fox. Kili landed on a cornflower, cowering in the blue bloom that seemed to adopt the colour of his wings almost instantly. Tilting his head the brunet inspected the animal carefully.

The fox was trembling softly, which confused him. It was a brisk morning, but not cold enough to bother creatures like this with its soft, thick fur. Maybe it was lost, although Kili couldn’t remember things like that ever happening with the animals living here. The easiest way to find out was to fly over and ask, but foxes usually didn’t appreciate his kind, refused to talk to them and would rather take a snap at their glittering wings.

Scrunching up his nose, the brunet shook his head. This wasn’t an experience he ever wanted to repeat. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to leave the fox. His brain needed a while to catch up with the unorthodox situation, but in the end it dawned on him. The fur wasn’t like anything he had seen before. Ginger, white, sometimes even grey or almost black when they came from the high mountains looming over the area in the distance, foxes came in many colours. A golden one had never been among them, though and Kili was also sure that they shouldn’t even exists. Still, there it was, shuddering and whimpering.

Despite all the experiences of the past, Kili sat up until his legs hung down from the cornflower and he could swing them to and fro. This was way more comfortable than inhaling the sweet pollen.

“Hello!” he called the fox, whose ears twitched immediately. “Are you alright?”

“Who is there?” the animal asked as it raised its head. Although _it_ wasn’t correct. _He_ would be the right way to address golden fur, considering the pleasant deep voice arising from his throat. The fox’s eyes searched for him in bewilderment and although his eyes grazed him more than once, they wouldn’t linger.

Kili rolled his eyes. Special fur or not, this was a typical fox, always expecting something worthy of their time and not a small being like the brunet.

“Me,” he replied. Waving impatiently until golden fur finally met his gaze.

His eyes seemed to widen, the trembles still visible in the slender form, as he got up to pad closer to him.

“What are you?” he whispered.

Kili frowned. All respect aside, animals knew of them. So either something wasn’t right here at all and the fox really hadn’t heard of their kind or this exemplar was even more arrogant than the others.

“I’m a fairy,” the brunet informed him.

“A fairy?” golden fur gasped. “That’s not possible…,” the last he muttered barely audible, but since he was much larger, his voice therefore a lot stronger, and also standing so close in front of him, it was impossible to miss.

“I’m sitting in front of you. So, it is possible, as you see.”

Getting up from his sitting position, Kili planted himself in front of the fox in all his fairylike glory, showing off his wings before shooting in the air and spinning around the flowers and grasses surrounding them. Dew was whirled up, raining down as if the sky was covered in thick, dark clouds. With a triumphant smile he landed on the animal’s snout and bowed.

Golden fur’s rear legs gave out, the yank going through the fox’s body would’ve caused Kili to lose his balance if his wings hadn’t stabilised his stance on instinct.

“This can’t be real.”

The longer the strange behaviour continued, the more the fairy realised something had to be very wrong, he just couldn’t point his finger at it. This was the first time he met such an unusual fellow after all.

“It is real,” Kili assured him, bending down to poke golden fur’s nose. “You feel that?” he asked him, not bothering to wait for an answer. “It is very real.”

“No… no, no, no, no,” the other muttered under his breath.

“Are you alright?” Kili repeated his question from before. “If you are lost I’m sure I can show you the way back to your home.”

The fox shook his head vigorously all of a sudden. With a surprised yelp the fairy leaped backwards, saving itself from being tossed to the ground.

“No, no it can’t be.”

Kili’s mystification gave slowly way to sadness at the desperation in the fox’s voice. It was neither arrogance nor lacking respect that made golden fur act in such a manner, that much was obvious now. But what truly pained him the young fairy couldn’t figure out. The meadow was his home, the forest and the lake, kissing the feet of the mountains growing in the east, the land of his forefathers. Everything he knew of the world came from tales told in their community. A fox like this or any other animal for that matter, had never found its way into their stories.

“Fox, tell me what happened! Maybe there is a way I can help you,” he pleaded with him, when golden fur began to whine with anguish.

It was probably stupid to offer a hypothetical solution he himself didn’t even believe he was able to provide. The other’s pain was so palpable, though, that it began to cut deep into Kili’s heart. Right now he would promise him the moon, if it just soothed a part of the animal’s suffering.

“There isn’t anything you can do, unless you know how to turn me back into a human.”

Staring at the other in disbelief, the fairy hesitated for a second, trying to taste the word on his tongue and the meaning it carried. Such a small word, describing a whole different existence, it felt surreal and heavy and wrong all at the same time.

“Human… you are a human?”

Golden fur raised his head, a tired gaze locking with Kili’s stunned one. And in those eyes, the brunet found the truth.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

His name was Fili and he didn’t remember anything, besides his name and his true form. It must’ve been a shock in more ways than one to wake up to a foreign environment with not only his memories missing, but also the limbs he was used to. Kili tried to explain their whereabouts as best as he could, but it wasn’t much in a situation that had to be unbearable and yet insurmountable.

The brunet took Fili to the eldest of his village, who promised to send word to the fairies in the mountains and beyond the borders, requesting their aid. Things like this would take time. Time, however, was a strange concept if you inherited a body that didn’t feel right. Therefore, while they waited for answer, Kili decided to distract his new found friend. To him it didn’t matter if Fili felt the same way about his presence. The brunet was a frugal soul when it came to friendships, as his mother liked to put it, just a couple of kind words, this was the amount he deemed necessary to call someone _my-friend_.

Thus he and Fili found themselves, just a couple of days later, wandering through the meadow in the light of the rising sun to collect dew droplets. Or rather Kili collected them, while Fili watched his task with fascination.

“Why pearls of dew?” the fox wondered curiously.

“They are the cleanest form of water. Rich in nutrients of the plants they were born on,” Kili explained to him with a smile. “We can survive on the lake water, sure. But it’s less healthy, let alone that dew tastes much better,” he grinned. “So we try to gather as much as we can to get safely through the dry season.”

“A simple life,” Fili mused.

The fairy huffed, focusing his eyes on the drop he was carefully separating from the green stalk it was hanging on.

“It’s not simple. Just like the life of every other creature here isn’t simple. We all try to survive. Sometimes it’s easier than on other days, but nothing about being here on this earth is simple. Just because every tree, every animal and every other living creature has learned how to survive doesn’t mean any of that is simple.”

Kili had never faced much hardship in his life, but he knew the stories of his mother from long before he was born. She had told him of the fire devouring the forest, destroying their home and sparing only the strongest of them. He couldn’t imagine the loss, that was true, and yet he was able to understand the impact of such a tragedy on their people.

Behind him Fili remained silent. Kili tucked the drop safely into the net of silk.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you,” golden fur apologised eventually.

Smiling softly, the brunet reached for another pearl, holding it gently in his hands as he turned around to face his friend.

“Look,” he urged him, pulling his gaze to the droplet sparkling in the scarce light of the approaching day. “Does this look simple to you?”

Fili shook his head, eyes wide and full of wonder as if a veil had suddenly lifted and cleared his sight. He could feel his chest swell with pride at making his friend understand, and perhaps this was the reason for Fili’s transformation. Maybe someone wanted to open his eyes for the beauty of the world.  It was a nice thought, almost soothing despite the lost expression that haunted the fox’s eyes so often. Certainly better than thinking about a curse born from hate for the mere sake of creating suffering.

As long as Fili didn’t remember, no one could prove Kili otherwise.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Fili was smart and insightful. Despite losing his memories he was still able to remember some things through emotions and experiences. Sure, they weren’t able to reveal much about him other than telling both of them what was completely new for him, but it wasn’t necessary to strengthen the wonderful image the fox had formed in Kili’s mind already. And the longer they spent time together, the more the young fairy felt like Fili held the same fondness for him.

The other people of his tribe had accepted the fox as well, which wasn’t natural. While fairies were a rather helpful bunch, they still preferred to stay in their own little circle and yet they allowed Fili to sleep at the roots of the huge oak tree they were living in and even the children weren’t stopped from flying down and petting the golden fur. Everyone seemed to feel Fili’s sincerity and treated him like one of them.

Of course there couldn’t be only happy times. Fili struggled with the changes of his body and went hungry for a long time, refusing to hunt and kill and eat raw meat. It probably would’ve killed him if Kili hadn’t decided one day to snuggle into his fur and to encourage him to eat the partridge that had ended in a springe a hunter must’ve placed.

“It’s not bad, Fee,” Kili whispered softly. “I know it must feel strange for you, but you don’t have the taste of a human anymore. You are a fox. It will be alright. It is dead anyway, don’t let it go to waste. Save yourself. If you want a chance to find out what happened to you, a chance to become a human again, you have to live. You have to eat.”

He had felt Fili shudder and tried to rub the fears from his friend, touches the fox couldn’t have registered as more than a barely noticeable brush.

“It is not wrong. We all play our part in nature. Every plant, every worm, every mammal. It is okay.”

In the end it had taken lots of gentle prodding, but Fili did eat eventually. He even admitted that he wasn’t feeling any different afterwards, which Kili counted as a success. Still, it was a life his friend couldn’t get used to and so this wasn’t the only time the young fairy talked him into doing what was necessary to survive.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

When the days became warmer and dew could no longer be found on the meadow in the morning, Kili turned into one more helping hand when it came to collecting seeds. Fairies would never take much, just a couple to have enough food for the winter, without harvesting the different plants and flowers completely, aware of the delicate balance nature needed to thrive.

Flower seeds were especially popular due to their sweet taste and so Kili stayed on his favourite place, always having Fili by his side. The weeks in each other’s presence had turned them inseparable and the brunet could barely imagine a life going gathering without his friend anymore.

On particular hot days they would wander to the lake. The fairy would sit on the shore and enjoy the heated kiss of sun on his wings, whereas Fili liked to doze in the shadow of a tree. Other times Fili would chase him through the shallow water, while Kili tried to outfly him, evading the drops raining down around him. They would play and laugh and despite having so many friends, none of them made him feel like Fili. As if his heart was bursting in his chest with joy. He wanted to scream his happiness to the trees until it collided with their tops and was carried in every corner of the forest.

All of this was new and exciting. He never wanted to part with it.

“Your wings,” Fili said one of these days that had Kili resting on a hot pebble and the fox covered by the branches of a burly bush. “I’ve never realised before.”

“What?” Kili muttered contently.

Opening one eye he peeked over to his friend curiously, not yet ready to leave the spot that had him almost fall asleep. Kili hadn’t done these things often in the past, mostly because it was dangerous to take a bath in the sun on his own for this very reason. He couldn’t keep an eye on birds or other animals that might mistake him for an insect and therefore a tasty prey. With Fili, however, he felt safe and could do what relaxed his kind the most: enjoy the heat of summer.

“You have wings like a dragonfly,” Fili said reverently.

Kili smiled knowingly as he closed his lid again.

“I do. They are beautiful, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” the fox agreed in a breathless whisper.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Kili’s emotions were a tumbling mess of anger and guilt, when he raced through the meadow, hoping to bring as much distance between himself and Fili as possible.  

The day had started well, until they received answer from the fairies living in the mountains. It was a message outlining their sadness of being unable to help. The news had hit Fili hard and Kili, actually intending to comfort his friend, was suddenly faced with plans of departure. Fili wanted to leave, to look elsewhere for answers and could barely be convinced to wait for the reply from beyond the borders.

It had hurt that their friendship seemed to mean so little to Fili. Of course Kili’s words had been too harsh, too hurtful and, most of all, too impulsive. How should he keep a clear head, though, if Fili didn’t even want to talk this through calmly? After all the weeks of fun they had spent with one another, the brunet had truly believed saying goodbye wouldn’t be this easy. He had been mistaken.

_“Why can’t you at least wait for the second messenger? Perhaps it will be the answer you are looking for and then you wouldn’t be here anymore to hear it. Take at least a couple of days to think about it,” Kili had pleaded with him._

_“I’ve already wasted enough time here. I can’t wait for the answers to come to me. I have to look for them myself.”_

_“Wasted?” Kili gasped in disbelief. “So that’s what this is for you?”_

_“My family must be wondering where I am, who knows what they must think.”_

_Fili didn’t even react to Kili’s shocked observation, which merely added to the hurt the young fairy was feeling. Slowly the anger began to seep into his body, making it tremble with suppressed energy._

_“You don’t remember anything! How do you know your family is looking for you? How do you know anyone is missing you at all?”_

Kili shook his head. It had been wrong of him to say these things… but that Fili would belittle everything they had experienced so far. He’d thought Fili was his friend, believed there was a real connection between them… he had truly assumed Fili had enjoyed the time they had spent together… It seemed he had been wrong. He was just a distraction, while Fili waited for what he wanted. Nothing more… a stupid, tiny fairy.

Angry tears began to blur his vision and just when he was about to wipe them away, a jolt wandered through his body, stopping him mid-motion. The fury and disappointment drained from his body as fear washed over his system.

He’d flown right into a web, a cobweb! By his ancestors, he knew better than to do that! Since he was a little boy he’d been told to be careful while flying. _Look out for webs_ , his mother had drilled into him. And now here he was, trapped in one of them. Kili gasped with fright, trying to push himself off, but the sticky threads wouldn’t let go.

This couldn’t be happening. Spiders didn’t make a difference between insects and fairies, they only felt the wiggling in their web and saw shimmering wings and attacked their prey. With horrifying clarity Kili realised he was going to die here, if he didn’t manage to escape. This was no scary tale anymore he and his friends had liked to tell the children in the starlight. It was reality and Kili would suffer every gruesome detail of it.

“Help!” he screamed, despite knowing he was far too deep in the meadow for other fairies to hear him.

His fingers tried to reach for the little sharp knife dangling from his belt, but he couldn’t stretch out his arm far enough, for the web pulled it back before he could even graze it. Yet he didn’t stop fighting. He needed to get out of here!

“Help! Please! Help me!”

Kili elongated again, the knife was his only chance. If he could just catch a hold of it. Again the web prevented his plan. A desperate huff escaped his lips.

Another cry for help got stuck in his throat as another wiggle went through the trap. Craning his neck, the fairy's eyes widened with terror, as he spotted the fat, black spider heading towards him. He felt frozen with fear, every coherent thought vanishing from his mind like strings of smoke in a storm.

Kili found himself wondering briefly, if he would still be alive when the spider would start devouring him.

All of a sudden, he was shaken again, more forcefully this time and ere he was able to comprehend what was going on, he was already falling. The grass cushioned his plunge to the ground, but the impact still pressed the air from his lung.

The smell of the earth hit him, when he was finally able to draw breath again. Kili was shuddering miserably, curling up in the dirt when his mind caught up with the terrifying situation he’d somehow managed to escape. The first sob wasn’t very far away, leaving him with a wave of tears running down his cheeks.

Just a few seconds later and he would’ve… he would’ve…

“Are you alright? Kili! Please, talk to me?” It took a while for him to become aware of Fili’s frantic voice calling him.

He wanted to answer, realising it must’ve been his friend saving him from one of the most terrible fates fairies could imagine, but when he opened his mouth to answer him, only another sob was ripped from his throat.

Fili, however, seemed to understand, lay down in the grass and convolved slowly around him, allowing Kili to hide in the soft fur and the familiar smell of the fox. His friend didn’t push him, let the panic work its way through the fairy’s small body and waited patiently. The sheer amount of affection, Kili felt coming from the fox in that moment, made him swallow with guilt and regret. He had said such awful things and yet Fili was here to save him, to comfort him.

“I’m sorry,” he rasped into the golden fur, once the tears had finally run dry.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The incident, as frightening as it had been, urged them to talk. They both apologised for their words and were even able to share a smile again – or what came closest to a smile with a fox – and returned to the oak tree. There Fili promised him to wait at least for the other messenger, ere he would leave.

The following days felt bittersweet, as they understood for the first time that their ways were going to part soon. For regardless what news would reach them, Fili would leave one way or another, either to look for cure or through turning back into a human. They tried to make their last days count, but it didn’t matter how much time they spent together, it wasn’t feeling like enough for Kili.

And then, on the first day of autumn, they received answers from beyond the border and as feared, they had no advice to give either.

The goodbye was tearful. Everyone had come to love Fili, but none with such intensity as Kili. He had to pull himself away almost violently, so he wouldn’t cling to the golden fur for the rest of his life and hid in his room for the next hour after it. Snuggling into the soft cotton of his bed was how his mother found him.

She took a seat on his bedside silently, gently stroking his hair and offering him the time he needed to recover at least partially from the parting. Eventually Kili sighed.

“You know,” he mumbled into a tuft of cotton, “he was here with us for so long, with no change at all that I began wondering what might be the point in all of this.”

“How do you mean?” she asked him calmly. His mother wasn’t pushing him at all and still Kili could hear the frown in her voice.

 “I just… I just thought… maybe the transformation was never supposed to bring him back where he came from… maybe it was supposed to send him where he belongs to.”

“That’s a justified consideration,” she mused, not once stopping the tender motion of her hand. “And where do you think, does he belong?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged meekly.

“You have never been a good liar, Kili,” Dis informed him almost matter-of-factly.

A tiny smile wandered to his lips at her familiar reaction, ere it was stolen by seriousness once again. He knew where Fili belonged to, knew it in the moment of their fight when his words began to cut so deeply. There was no way to deny it.

“He belongs to me and I belong to him.”

“That he does.”

Hearing his mother agree so easily filled his heart with hope. Could it be… was it possible she had seen the same feelings in them and therefore held not even the smallest word of warning for him? He was a fairy and Fili a human in the body of a fox, she should be shocked, if not disgusted. But instead…

“But I’m not the one you should tell that.”

With a frown Kili sat up. Even if it was true, even if the desire to keep their friendship intact had stopped them from uttering how they felt deep down, Fili had already left with a goal.

“It’s soon two hours since-“

“Not a distance that a fast fairy like you can’t catch up with.”

“But what if he doesn’t want to come back?”

“Then you will go with him,” she told him readily.

His eyes widened with disbelief.

“But I-“

“You said it yourself. You two belong together and now stop wasting time and go get him!”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Kili was laughing freely as he shot through the forest, flying parallel to the path that led out of the forest and which Fili was certainly following to avoid getting lost. Even though his friend had adjusted to the senses of the fox, he still was a human by nature and thus didn’t always listen to his nose and ears.

The fairy’s chest was bursting with happiness at the thought of staying with Fili, going with him wherever his friend wanted. He whooped with joy, twirling in the air, while his wings seemed to hum an excited song. At one point the homesickness would certainly set in, but right now he didn’t want to focus on gloomy thoughts, when he was so close to snuggling into Fili’s golden fur.

It couldn’t be far now, with his current speed he should catch up with him any second now.

There! Was that a hint of golden fur on the ground? Kili’s smile widened.

“Fili!” he called his friend happily.

Just to stop violently in the air, when he realised the golden fur wasn’t moving. His heart seemed to miss a beat, maybe two or three or perhaps it had stopped beating all together. The joy fell with the heaviness of a stone from his body, falling to the ground and shattering into a million little pieces.

His eyes widened as he slowly shook his head. No… no this couldn’t… this wasn’t… not now… he had to be mistaken… this wasn’t Fili… that couldn’t be…

With a scream of anguish, he rushed towards the motionless form of his friend. It was springe… a cursed noose to catch rabbits and other smaller animals Fili was caught in. It had pulled tight around his neck, taking him the air to breathe. And it seemed to have succeeded, for when Kili landed on the golden fur, there was no motion going through the fox’s chest telling him otherwise.

He barely managed to keep the sob in, as he bent over to press his ear under the fur, listening for a heartbeat.

Nothing.

“No!” Kili screamed.

Not yet! Not yet! He wanted to tell him! He wanted to stay with him! This wasn’t fair!

His small hands grabbed the wire the noose had been created with, pulled and yanked and tugged, hoping if he just loosened it a little Fili would come back to him.

“Let go of him!” he demanded frantically.

But he was too tiny, not strong enough. In the end it was Fili’s blood, coating the wire, that caused Kili’s fingers to slip.

The fairy toppled over, burying his hands in the familiar fur to stop his fall. It was right there that all fight left him.

He screamed his pain to the trees, to every being of the forest, yet there seemed to be no one taking notice of his agony. Kili cried and sobbed and begged as the world suddenly began to feel silent and cold.

“Oh, please no,” he wailed. “Please don’t leave me. You belong here! You can’t just leave me. Oh, please, please. I love you. Don’t go.”

Kili was shaken out of his grief by a sudden motion under him. His eyes were hurting from all the tears he’d wept for his friend, but it wasn’t Fili breathing or stirring that had caused the strange sensation. No… Fili seemed to shrink under him.

Unable to comprehend what was happening, the fairy stared at his friend. The noose dropped to the ground, no longer tight enough to catch anything.

Kili gasped with disbelief, once the process finally stopped. On the ground, next to the trap wasn’t a fox anymore. It also wasn’t a human. Instead he spotted a fairy. Long golden hair spread over the ground, looking even more beautiful than the fur of the fox. And his wings… his wings! Their colour took his breath away. They weren’t bright like flowers, but soothing and gentle. Yellow ochre, a kind he’d barely spotted during his whole life. It seemed fitting that the most important thing in his heart, would come at such a rare appearance.

And then, as if the moment hadn’t been already special enough, the fairy stirred.

Kili was fast to cross what little distance separated them. Carefully he helped the groaning blond to sit up, staring at his face with fascination. Unable to stop himself he reached out, gently touching the other’s cheek and tested how the beard felt under his hand. He smiled when he sensed how the fairy leaned into his touch.

“Fili,” the brunet’s voice quivered slightly. “Look at you. You are beautiful.”

His friend slowly opened his eyes, gazing at him with surprise.

“Kili? What… what are you doing here?” Fili blinked, obviously confused by their missing size difference and slowly regarded his new form. “What-,“ he gasped.

“You are a fairy.” There were again tears running down his cheeks, this time, however, it weren’t tears born from suffering. “Like me. The spell is broken.”

“But I thought I would-”

“Yeah,” Kili's laugh was smothered by a relieved sob. “Me too. But it seems it was there for a different reason. You are where you belong.”

“Where I… ohhh.” His eyes widened with understanding and wonder.

And then he was smiling. The first real smile that wasn’t covered by the skin of the fox. It was wide, with dimples and the most beautiful thing Kili had ever seen.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Hand in hand. Cautiously testing unused wings. This was how their return was remembered and told in stories ever since.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it!


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